If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

The Kosciuzko bridge is completely baffling to me. It's like any other roadway (maybe in worst condition that others) yet for some inexplicable reason drivers freak out as they approach and slow to a crawl. There's no logical reason for the congestion there on a daily basis. I see it all the time, cars slow down for no good reason and start a herd mentality then before you know it the BQE is backed up for miles

When the exit lane to the LIE is slow, a lot of people who want to exit will ride the faster left lane, trying to figure out a good time to move right. Before the bridge, much of the on-ramp traffic doesn't want to exit to the LIE, and moves left to stay on the BQE. Add trucks to the mix, especially when they have to break hard to avoid slamming into someone who cuts in front of them, and they have to run through several gears to get up hill.

So the midtown tunnel flooded with 8 million gallons of water. The source was an overflowing Newtown Creek during hurricane Sandy. IMO this is just another reason to fill in that cesspool already and get rid of the permanent traffic jam that is the Kosciuszko Bridge

The east river likely would not have made it to the mouth of the midtown tunnel in this storm if newtown creek did not exist. As for the cost of filling it in, I wouldn't be surprised if the superfund cleanup project is going to be more expensive. I'm all for public waterways but this toxic cesspool and surrounding industrial sites are not worth the colossal effort needed to properly rehabilitate

This map indicates areas within the Kosciuszko Bridge Project identified by the New York State Department of Transportation as being "archeologically sensitive" for pre-historic resources, characterized as the period of Native American habitation prior to European contact. The red blocks identify areas rated as having high archeological potential, the yellow blocks as having moderate potential.

Historians say the area around Newtown Creek was once home to a Native American tribe called the Mespeatches, where the neighborhood Maspeth got its name, before it was settled by Dutch and English colonists in the 1600s — making it ripe with the possibility of archeological findings.

"The area is very, very rich in potential archeological artifacts," said Bob Singleton, executive director of the Greater Astoria Historical Society. "There have been a number of archeological digs throughout the years along Newtown Creek."

Ralph Solecki,a former Columbia University faculty member and archeologist known for his excavations at the Shanidar Cave in Iraq, conducted digs along Newtown Creek when he was just in high school. During one excavation in 1935, he and others uncovered the hearth of a 17th century settler's home.

"We came up with the remains of a burned-out house in a sandy bank, and it was a fireplace in which we found a number of pipe stems identified 1640," Solecki recalled.

Starting in the 1800s, Newtown Creek became one of the most heavily used industrial waterways in the region, according to the state, and it has seen countless oil spills in the decades since. It was declared a national Superfund site in 2010.

The State Department of Transportation will begin work this fall on the construction of a new Kosciuszko Bridge, and will be excavating areas along the Queens side of the creek near the Long Island Rail Road tracks, south of Calvary Cemetery between Long Island City and Maspeth.

The $511 million project — the centerpiece of Gov. Andrew Cuomo's jobs program — has been pushed ahead 18 months.

Ground water uncovered during the excavation will be treated with an extensive filtering system to remove contaminants before being returned to the creek, according to the DOT.

At a public hearing last week to discuss the plans, a representative for Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan asked DOT officials if they had prepared for the possibility of uncovering artifacts during excavation.

"We're well aware of that issue," said project manager Robert Adams, adding that the DOT and the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) is working on refining an existing plan to identify and monitor the areas that have the most archeological potential.

According to a draft of the plan, SHPO considers area around the creek to be "archeologically sensitive" for prehistoric sites — defined as when the land was inhabited by Native Americans, prior to European contact — because of its "proximity to water, topography that features high ground overlooking wetlands, the presence of abundant food resources, and the area’s known use by Native Americans at contact."

But the plan states that the large amount of human activity along Newtown Creek over the years greatly lessens the chance of uncovering intact artifacts.

"This area has been degraded, filled, built upon, so it's unlikely that you're going to find a whole lot of original material," Adams said at the hearing.

Still, the possibility is there, said Christina Wilkinson, president of the Newtown Historical Society.

"I absolutely do think it's a possibility," she said. "Things are uncovered all the time in New York City, believe it or not."

Within and along the creek, she said, one possible discovery could be mounds of oyster shells that Native American tribes used for currency.

Singleton said items from other eras could be uncovered as well. Some of the earliest European settlements were based along Newtown Creek in the 1600s and 1700s. On the Brooklyn side, an area called "Pottery Beach" was known for its rich clay soil and is considered by some historians as the birthplace of American pottery.

"You can find all kinds of things like clay pipes, vessels, pottery that was made, stuff like that," Singleton said.

Folklore also held that William "Captain" Kidd, a Scottish sailor and notorious pirate in the 1600s, stashed his treasure somewhere near the creek — a story that sent generations of neighborhood children digging for the precious loot, Singleton said.

"The area is probably one of the richest archeological sites in New York City," he said. "I'm not saying that they will find anything, but there is a very strong possibility, and every effort should be made to ensure that if something is, the proper techniques are applied."

A draft of plans outlined on the state DOT's website states that archeologists will inspect the project areas prior to construction, and that archeological monitoring will be conducted in regions "designated as moderate to high sensitivity for intact archeological resources."

According to maps included in the draft, a large swath of the affected area is considered to have moderate archeological potential, while two Queens blocks are considered as having high potential for prehistoric findings: near 43rd Street between 55th Avenue and 54th Drive and between 54th Avenue and 54th Road.

The project's prospective construction contractor will be expected to plan for delays that could result from archeological monitoring, according to the DOT.

"The plan will then be included in the Request for Proposals so that prospective bidders will be aware of their responsibilities before they place their bids," DOT spokesman Adam Levine said in an e-mail.

Historic discoveries have been made at New York City construction sites before. In 2010, workers at the World Trade Center site uncovered part of an 18th-century ship that had been undisturbed for more than 200 years.

Wilkinson, of the Newtown Historical Society, said she and other historians would be excited if a similar discovery was made along Newtown Creek.

A confession first: I’m likely the only person on earth who calls this spot DUKBO — short for “down under the Kosciuszko Bridge onramp.”

Laurel Hill Boulevard slouches roughly as it descends toward Review Avenue, where the Penny Bridge once stood and the Long Island Railroad once maintained a station and the Roman Catholic funeral ferries docked. The Kosciuszko Bridge occupies the shallow valley between two land forms which the colonial settlers of Newtown called “Laurel Hill” to the west and an easterly elevation once known as “Berlin Hill.” Berlin was a village which was absorbed into Maspeth during the First World War when living or doing business in a place called Berlin was a sticky situation.

Lonely and desolate, DUKBO is a hinterland not too far from the geographic center of the megalopolis called New York City, and this must be one of the least walked stretches of pavement in the entire metropolitan zone. It’s where the Alsops, Brutnells, and Wandells chose to locate their farming operations in the Colonial era and just up the hill from where a few hundred British soldiers were garrisoned during the Revolutionary War.

To the west lies Calvary, First Calvary, where Archbishop Dagger John Hughes consecrated the soil of Protestant Newtown for the use of the Roman Catholic Church as a cemetery. The elevation of Laurel Hill is quite apparent here: The nine-story General Electric Vehicle Company factory’s roofline is at eye level, and it is found at Borden Avenue and Starr, only a few blocks away.

The hill was once a bit higher, but the construction of the cemetery in the 19th century removed a few hundred million tons of topsoil from it (this was the subject of a lawsuit in state court, wherein the farmers of Newtown sued the Catholic Church, as the topsoil was shipped to Jamaica, Queens, for use on the Catholic plantations there).

Sidewalks are either nonexistent, shattered, or impassable on Laurel Hill Boulevard, so a turn onto 54th Avenue carries you under the bridge. This decaying structure is scheduled to be replaced with a modern bridge, designed to overcome many of the flaws exhibited by this 1939 era Meeker Avenue Bridge – renamed the Kosciuszko Bridge in 1940.

There are plenty of holes in the fence lines big enough to squeeze a camera lens through as you pass under the structure, but one should never trespass around properties that adjoin the Newtown Creek lest your reality get a bit grittier than you might be comfortable with. Especially do not trespass around transportation infrastructure, as the NYPD is rather touchy about this. In the shot above, you can actually see the dramatic corrosion which has compelled the Governor to “fast track” the replacement of the bridge, which is on the State’s list of deficient bridges.

Were you to turn left off of 54th Avenue, you’d encounter the cloverleaf onramps which form the intersection of the Long Island Expressway and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway; 43rd Street heads south toward Newtown Creek at a considerably angled declination. This stretch of 43rd Street will someday be the new DUKBO, and easement purchases for the new bridge have already caused nearby homes and business buildings to shutter and be demolished. The State DOT has announced that the replacement bridge will sit a bit to the east of the 1939 model.

The Maespetche who lived here were mostly wiped out by smallpox by the 1700s, and by that time the Dutch had already established an agricultural community. The English arrived, often overland from Eastern Long Island, and mocked the Dutch whom they saw as old fashioned and bound by odd customs and religious practices. The English had plenty of controversies themselves, with the “Friends” cult showing up time and again from New England via the Long Island Sound, witch panics, and all sorts of odd religious experimentation by commoner and courtier alike going on.

All that sort of nonsense and jumping about ended in the early 1800′s, when an industrial boom got started here in DUKBO. General Chemical came in the 1840s, and joined with the distilleries and fat renderers and acid factories already present to participate in what we would call “the second industrial revolution.” Things really kicked into gear when the Long Island Railroad laid down track in the 1860s and 70s. Pictured above is the former home of Phelps Dodge at the corner of 43rd and 56th Road; General Chemical became Phelps Dodge over the course of a century. At its apex, this industrial site employed 17,500 people and squatted along some 36 square acres of the creeklands. The tallest chimneys in the United State (at the time) stabbed up from here, painting the sky with poison effluvium whose pH content was sufficient to cause the marble and granite monuments at Calvary Cemetery to melt like ice cream — the subject of yet another lawsuit.

The Kosciuszko Bridge leaves DUKBO in Queens and swings out over Newtown Creek toward DUKBO in Greenpoint. It carries something like 200,000 vehicle crossings a day between Brooklyn and Queens, it’s 1.1 miles long (including its approaches), and looms some 150 feet over Newtown Creek. The reason it’s so high is that oceangoing ships used to come all the way back here, some 2.1 miles from the East River.

In 1939, during the Great Depression, one of the most powerful men in New York City was Robert Moses. Moses had a project he was keen on, which he called the Brooklyn Queens Connecting Highway.

The New Meeker Avenue Bridge opened on August 23, 1939. It was the first link in a chain that eventually became the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. It promised easy egress to the 1939 World’s Fair in what we now call Flushing Meadows Corona Park, and was a showpiece project for the Great Builder.

American Bridge Company and Bethlehem Steel worked on it, along with dozens of other contractors. The Big K was part of what was known as the Regional Plan, which also provided the pretext for the erection of the Triborough, Whitestone, Marine Parkway and a slew of other bridges across the archipelago.

For more on the $517,000,000 New York State DOT Kosciuszko Bridge project, click here, or just wait a couple of months until construction begins.

This won't help much, the problem isn't the bridge itself. The problem is the sharp turn and ramp up with a ramp down and other turn. Marine traffic needs to be closed to have a lower span and the approach needs to be re-engineered